February Polish Party - Chevrons

I'm a bit late posting, but the theme for February's Polish Party is... CHEVRONS. When I've done chevrons before I've used either special tip guides (I bought some in Superdrug, but they've all be used up now) or sellotape, but today I made my own out of paper labels. I folded one label in half lengthways, and then cut it off in diagonal strips, giving symmetrical guides. Because in the past I've done chevrons pointing towards or away from the tip of my nail, I decided to do these sideways instead, and to try and get them to look like chevron road signs.

I wanted a silver holo base, so I used my ancient Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Diamond. Because that's so thin, I started with a base of Barry M Silver Foil, then added two coats of Diamond. Then I placed my guides, and added a coat of OPI 4 in the Morning from the Gwen Stefani collection.  

I like the contrast of the matte black and the holo silver. I like that the silver looks dull in some lights, and crazy holo in others, just like the road signs. 

 I also tried this with a topcoat, just to see what it was like. I'm not sure I like it as much though. 

My main excitement today is that I bought a tent light box!  My boy Ferg immediately claimed it!

I took a couple of photos in it quickly, but of course the holo doesn't show properly in it. I need to have a play around with my lighting to get this working properly, but I'm excited! No more wavy bathroom wall background!

Somehow my skin looks MUCH drier in there!

To tie in with this month's theme - this week I encountered a teenage boy called... CHEVRON. Yes, really.




Check out the other Polish Party posts here:

An InLinkz Link-up

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Lavender Pearl?

I've posted before about my friend Squeakymom's ability to sniff out a long lost and discontinued nail varnish treasure trove in a dusty old pound shop! This is the last of the bunch that she sent me several months ago - I've just realised that I never got round to taking any photos of it!  So here it is.  This one is unlabelled, but we think it's Lavender Pearl - if you know better, please let me know!

This is four coats of Lavender Pearl on its own. As you can see, it's very sheer and pale, and does show brushstrokes.  The formula is very thin, as with many of the Nail Prisms, although I'm not sure if that's because it's a thin formula, or because these prisms are so very old.

Lavender Pearl is a very pale silvery pink when worn alone. Somewhere between a pearly white and a shimmery pink, with a touch of green in the right light.

I then tried it over black (Rimmel Black Out) and this is where this prism polish comes alive!  Over a dark colour, it's a rich green/purple duochrome that looks really effective, in my opinion. This is one coat over black. 

I hate how short my ring and middle finger nails are! They are growing though, as they were far worse a week ago.

It's really hard to capture the purple effect on camera, but it is there, honest!


I've just realised that I have not bought a single bottle of polish since 1st July!  Over two months ago! I haven't looked that often in shops, but when I have, I haven't seen anything that I've wanted to get. I'm hoping that the autumn/winter collections are a bit more interesting than the things I've seen recently!

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Lavender Sky?

This is one of the fabulous Sally Hansen Nail Prisms that Squeakymom found in a bargain bin in a secret location somewhere!  I've had it a while but have only just got round to making it useable.  When it arrived, it looked like this!

There's no brush! I fished around for a bit with a cocktail stick and dragged out a lot of very shiny bristles. Today I decanted the polish (using one of the tiny funnels from my Claire's caviar beads) into an old Seche bottle, leaving the original bottle looking like this!

Now I can use it!  This is five (yes really!) coats of the mystery Nail Prisms that I believe may be Lavender Sky - although please correct me if I'm wrong!

It's so pretty isn't it? Formula is very very thin and sheer, left me with a bit of flooding round the cuticles and meant the polish isn't really dry the way I'd like. I think next time I'll layer it over maybe a silver base.

This is so pretty though, I can forgive the thin formula. The silver-purple-greeny-blue duochrome is more visible in the light when I move my fingers around, it's very hard to capture on camera. I still love it though.

I think there are already tiny dents on my thumbnail, oops!

Birthday + Another Swap = LOADS OF NAIL STUFF!!

I had a birthday, and bought stuff from the Born Pretty online store, and did another swap with my American friend Ariadne Elise, and all the parcels arrived on the same day!



In the box are: lots of nail varnishes, peanut butter related American sweets & chocolates, socks, nail varnish, a very special personalised nail varnish planner (lol), cupcake supplies, Springsteen cds, various vouchers and more nail varnish.

Ari made me a gorgeous ring which is so sparkly it's impossible to take a photo of.

I bought studs and striping tape and lots of glequins from Born Pretty:

A friend sent me two of the OPI Germany polishes. These are Danke Shiny Red and Germani-cure by OPI. 

These are my swapsies! Look! My first Kleancolor polishes, and OH MY GOODNESS!

Look!

And more!

I am going to have so much fun with this lot!

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Mystery - Mandarin Garnet? Golden Tourmaline??

This is another of my unlabelled Sally Hansen Nail Prisms. I am torn between thinking it's Mandarin Garnet (except that mine looks redder) and Golden Tourmaline (except that mine looks more orange). It's somewhere between the two from what I can see!

Here it is over various different base colours. Thumb is three coats of MYSTERY PRISM on its own. All the others are two coats over one coat of base colour. Index over red (Orly Ma Cherie), middle over pink (Barry M Shocking Pink), ring over orange (OPI A Roll in the Hague) and little finger over black (Rimmel Black Out). 

The finger that looks closest to the Prism on its own is the ring finger, so the orange base. Having said that, over orange, pink and red, the Sally Hansen looks very very similar. I do not like it over black. The other four fingers though - wow! I love this polish, it's just my colour, and it's so sparkly! 


There is no sun today, so it was hard to really capture the sparkle. But I wore it last week over orange for two days, and got so many comments about it. I love how it looks.


Does anyone recognise this colour, or have either Golden Tourmaline or Mandarin Garnet, to compare?  Or is there some other colour that I'm not considering?  Please let me know what you think!

Sally Hansen Garnet Lapis - and a Mystery! (Turquoise Opal?)

I have posted about Garnet Lapis before - see here and here. 

This week my friend Lorraine sent me ANOTHER "Garnet Lapis". It was unlabelled, but looked just the same as her Garnet Lapis and mine (both labelled). However, once I started looking at my two bottles together, I started to doubt myself, and to see differences. The new bottle (on the left) has a bright green tinge in certain lights that the original (labelled) bottle does not.

To compare, I swatched both. At one coat, they looked identical. At two, they looked identical. But at four - they did not! It was really hard to capture the difference on camera, but it was really clear in real life.

I didn't get round to doing a clean up on these, as I wanted to grab the sunshine while I could. My apologies for the mess round my cuticles!

L-R is definite Garnet Lapis over black, definite Garnet Lapis alone (4 coats), 'new' Garnet Lapis? alone (4 coats) and 'new' Garnet Lapis? over black.  

As you can see, the colours are very very similar, especially worn alone. But there is a definite difference I think, especially over black. The mystery potential Garnet Lapis is greener, and the one that definitely is Garnet Lapis is bluer. 

In many photos I took, these two polishes look identical. In the right angles and lights, when the purple is showing, the colour is the same. But twist my hand a bit, change the light, and one looks distinctly green, and the other looks distinctly blue. 

Here they are again, the mystery colour on my little and ring fingers, the definite one on my middle and index fingers.

So, I am concluding that I think the new polish is NOT Garnet Lapis, unless there were two slightly different versions, which I don't think is the case. It may be Turquoise Opal, but without an expert opinion, I can't say. 

What does everyone else think?  Any ideas?  At the end of the day, who cares what the colour is called, they're both GORGEOUS!

 

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Diamond

My lovely friend Lorraine over at Squeaky Baby has some kind of nail varnish sixth sense, and TWICE now she's found a stash of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - those gorgeous, and long discontinued sparkly holographic and sometimes duochrome polishes - in bargain basements. Last time she sent me Blush Diamond, Golden Cinnabar, Garnet Lapis and Ruby Sapphire.   This time she discovered another treasure trove in a pound shop, and sent me Diamond, another Garnet Lapis, and three mystery polishes! Look!

Aren't they gorgeous!? L-R is Garnet Lapis, Mystery No1, Diamond, Mystery No2, Mystery No3.

This is Mystery No1. We think it may be Golden Tourmaline, but we're not certain.  

This is Mystery No2. We think it may be Lavender Sky.

Look what happened when I opened this one though!  No brush at all! I dug around in the bottle with a cocktail stick, and out came a partially decomposed and tangled ratty bundle of brush hairs, like some kind of shiny pearly dead beast. It was a bit gross. But I can use a different brush (maybe an old one from an empty bottle of Seche Vite) for this, so no harm done.

Mystery No3 is the one on the end of the line in the first photo. Probably Lavender Pearl? 

Anyway, on to actually wearing one, yay!  This is one coat of Barry M Silver Foil, with two coats of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Diamond.  Diamond is very thin and a bit watery, but goes on very smooth and dries well.  In normal non-direct light, it all looks a bit dull, doesn't it?

But just you wait! Look at it in sunlight!

I mean - LOOK AT IT!

Isn't it pretty?

Sorry, did I say pretty? I mean WOWSERS, LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUSNESS!!

Needless to say, these photos come nowhere near showing how amazing it looks in real life. It is a mega sparkly, shiny holographic layer of awesome all over my fingers.  I need to try it over some dark colours next and see what happens.

This is my entire Sally Hansen Nail Prisms collection.

L-R Blush Diamond, Ruby Sapphire, Mystery 1, Garnet Lapis, Diamond, Mystery 2, Mystery 3, Garnet Lapis, Golden Cinnabar.

 

Sally Hansen Blush Diamond - Again!

I know I posted about this before - but we had bright sunshine a few days ago, and I had this on, and I just thought it was too pretty not to take more photos!

This is one coat of Sally Hansen's Blush Diamond over one coat of Essie Mademoiselle, and some evening sunshine.

Essie Jamaica Me Crazy + Sally Hansen Lady Luck

This is the second of my Essie polishes, Jamaica Me Crazy. Oh, I do love a bad pun!

The application on this was lovely - really smooth formula, nice brush, dried evenly and quickly. This is two coats plus topcoat.

I really like this - it's a lovely bright, saturated colour, a lovely zesty fuschia pink.

After a couple of days, I decided to try out another of my American swap polishes, so I added Sally Hansen Gem Crush in Lady Luck over the top. This is two coats of Lady Luck over Jamaica Me Crazy.


Lady Luck has a darkish pinky purple jelly base, and lots of bright magenta/fuschia glitter, and some bright silver holo glitter for good measure.  It dried very matte and dull, so I added a layer of Seche Vite, and then another layer, because it was still pretty matte. And then I added a layer of Sally Hansen Mega Shine topcoat, because it STILL wasn't very shiny!

I liked this, but was disappointed in how much shinier and sparklier it is in the bottle than on the nails.  After all this, I had LOTS of layers: basecoat, 2 x Jamaica Me Crazy, topcoat, 2 layers Lady Luck, 3 layers topcoat = NINE layers. It didn't dry properly, and it all scraped off pretty easily a couple of hours later.  Next time I won't layer it, and I'll go straight for the very shiny topcoat instead of the Seche. 

It's pretty though!

I'm off to France for a week - I've got China Glaze Riveting on my fingers, and Rimmel Heart on Fire on my toes. See you in a week!